


Wiped Clean

by scarletvoid



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'm not well versed in how mental health actually is, My First Fanfic, Not a robot, Personal Growth, Poetic, Protective Hoshigaki Kisame, Protective Uchiha Itachi, References to Depression, Sasuke after the Massacre, Sasuke is human, Self-Indulgent, Short Chapters, Survivors Guilt, Training, no beta we die as fools, or at least an attempt to be poetic, protective team seven, story told through snippets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 14:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20780111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletvoid/pseuds/scarletvoid
Summary: Years after the massacre, Sasuke finally faces Itachi again, but upon his escape, ends up with more questions than answers. There is conspiracy lurking in the dark, and slowly, through many encounters, Sasuke realises that Itachi’s hands aren’t as blood-stained as he'd thought.AU told through small snippets





	1. to begin...

He tastes warm rust gushing from his gums, pooling in his mouth. It dribbles down his chin, it’s path unburdened—unstoppable. 

_ Drip. Drip. Drip. _

Sasuke draws in a deep, shuddering breath. The sleek wood of the hallway floor is unforgivingly cold against his hands. His arms quiver weakly under his weight as he heaves himself up onto his aching knees.

He looks up; a nightmare stares back at him.

“The sharingan...” he said with a searching gaze. His face remained blank—bleak. He’d cut his hair above his shoulders. Sasuke remembered it being inky and long, always tied with a black ribbon at the back of his neck. As a child he’d considered growing out his hair just like his brother. “–and two tomoe now? Disappointing. I had three by the time I was your age.”

Goosebumps shot up the skin of his arms. Age-old hurt swirled in his belly, buried beneath a monstrous, churning rage. He ground his teeth to cage a wild, irate scream.

_ Disappointing_, he said, like he was expecting Sasuke to be just like him.

_ Disappointing_, he said, like he didn’t _ murder _ their _ whole _ family, their _ whole _clan—

(—”Yes, you remember the Uchiha from the branch family, Shisui, I believe? He and the heir were good friends, Shisui had been ANBU—”

“—I heard that the heir, Itachi, had murdered his friend Shisui to get stronger—whatever that means.”

“—Like me, you might be able to use the true strength of the Uchiha Clan—the Mangekyō Sharingan. But there’s a catch.”

Blood stains his pale skin scarlet—the blood of their family, and he wears it like it was an accomplishment; a victory. “Take the life of your best friend. You must kill them.”)

There is orange, on the edge of his vision. The ‘eye-burning, too-bright, too-saturated’ kind. A few steps away from Itachi, Naruto is sprawled on the ground out cold, deep breaths forcing his chest up and down—_ alive, still alive _—and his eyes are closed.

And Itachi had said—_ disappointing_, like taking Naruto’s life was something so very small.

“Good,” Sasuke says, with a wheezing, spiteful laugh. “I won’t be like you.”

His fingers tremble with something like desperation. He curls his hands into tight, angry fists.

I won’t kill my teammate for _ power_, he doesn’t say.

(—“Not enough hatred, little brother.” The moon is _ dripping blood_—)

“You won’t?” For the first time since before the massacre of his clan, he saw that smile. That smile Itachi used to give him when he said something, as if amused, as if he knew something Sasuke didn’t. It seemed a little different now—more grim. “I suppose you’re right.”

Slowly, eerily, Itachi looks down at the limp, _ young_, blond boy in the door frame. Sasuke feels his whole body lock up.

“Your hatred is wavering,” he says, voice soft. “Perhaps some motivation will put it back on the right path?” He takes one step, then another, his footfalls near-silent, even in the quiet of the hall. 

“Itachi,” someone says, simply—warningly. Sasuke’s head snapped left, where a blue skinned man—Kisame, he’d said before—leans uncaringly against the wall, resting an elbow on the handle of a huge, hulking, scaly sword. 

Itachi only spares him a glance, blank-faced as ever, but it makes the Kiri-nin relax, a grunt escaping his throat. He makes a waving gesture with his hand, as if to say “carry on, carry on.”

And then Itachi is moving again—slow, in that apathetically threatening way of his—and a yell forces it’s way out of Sasuke’s throat. 

“Don’t!” he screams, guttural and desperate, like an animal on it’s last leg, “Don’t touch him, I’ll kill you!” 

The threat falls short, when Itachi looks back at him and examines him on the ground, bloody, bruised, paralyzed from his injuries. What a sight he must make, heart thundering through his ears, his nails clawing at the ground, teeth bared in a snarl.

Itachi only shakes his head, with _ disappointment_. “Foolish little brother. Empty words won’t save him.” 

His breath catches in his throat, held there by the grasp of his panic. Naruto’s chest moves, slow, mechanical, routinely—up, down, up, down. And he can see it clearly—that if Itachi takes one step, then another, it will be still, cold, a routine frozen forever.

He calls for his chakra, depleted as it is, forcing the burning, writhing power to his hands to form a last, feeble chidori. It fizzes out in his hands, the spark diminishing to a barely audible cackle, and his chest is tightening, a desperate noise frozen in his throat.

_ No_, he thinks, watching Itachi, who in turn watches him, body half-turned towards Naruto.

Naruto. His teammate. His _ friend_.

His shoulder begins to burn, chakra searing through him, branding him like hot iron. There is a laugh, a shudder of scales, a snake with a poisoned chalice. I can help you, it says, we can kill him. Then the power leaves him, like leaves ripped from a tree, like a flower stripped of it’s petals.

Watching him still, Itachi takes a step.

A breath away from Naruto.

Phantom grief spreads through his chest—blond hair streaked with blood, wide empty blue eyes, a still, still chest—and Sasuke reaches out, fire burning through him like hot lava, thinks, _ you will not take him from me_.

Black spreads out, crooning, drawing him in like a predator to a bird, and the mark on his neck flares to life.

  
  
  
  



	2. interlude

Trembling, cold, in terror.

A child,

He lay there.

Silently, invisibly.

To blend in?

Perhaps to hide from the truth of reality…

He lay there.

Translucent.

Cold.

A ghost.

Vision? A tunnel.

Blind,

He waits.

And outside?

Reality laughs.

A crow takes flight.

Life goes on—

  


It is no dream, he finds.

The walls are clean. He’s never seen them so white. It’s not anything he would’ve paid attention to, before. There hadn’t really been any reason to.

They replace the carpet.

To Sasuke, his surroundings are no less bloody.

He feels grief tighten his heart, feels the phantom touch of a soft hand through his hair, curling on his nape. Safety, ripped away.

How can one ever feel safe in a place like this, where countless were slaughtered?

_ How_, he thinks, but cannot bear to leave.

Memories line the walls. Pictures. Shards of a broken dream. Soft, warm eyes, crinkled with smile lines. A stern mouth. A gentle embrace. A kind shadow at his shoulder.

He would always pass those pictures without a glance. Now, he can’t bear to look away.

It’s quiet. Too quiet. There is no presence. 

He sets the table. Forgets that he needs only enough for one. Stares unblinkingly at four plates, sitting empty.

There are too many plates in the cupboards, too much empty room on the dining table. Too much area for one person.

Overbearing, it is; the guilt of survival.

Here, inside, there are frozen ghosts, gazing aimlessly into the beyond.

And yet, outside...

He hears birds chirping, cooing, the flap of a fragile wing beat. Hears the wind sing so loud it rattles the frames of the windows.

Inside, Sasuke sits among four plates, and drinks deep from a lie.


End file.
